IN TRANSIT
Today was another day of travel from beginning to end. Rise at 7 am, take advantage of one last all-you-can-eat Western breakfast at the Black Diamond Lodge, pack, get driven down to the Hilton to be picked up by a Greyhound hauling us all the way to Chitose Airport, watch two excellent episodes of Lost on the bus, be delayed on a snowy country road by a three-vehicle pileup ahead of us, have Chris call me a jerk because I am reluctant to take photographs of the crash site (call me crazy but I think its in bad taste to gawk and take photos of a bunch of people, including children, who’ve just been through an accident and are probably pretty shaken up), fly down to Tokyo, have the 7-Eleven ATM at the airport reject my card, eat lunch at McDonalds, take the train to Tokyo’s central station which is the size of a fucking airport, wander through it like slack-jawed yokels fresh from the countryside (which is more or less true), cash our Rail Passes, have the girls at the JR office call Rob “Mr. Robot,” board a bullet train bound for Osaka, feel vaguely disappointed that nightfall means you can’t appreciate the countryside rushing by at incredible speeds, decide that maybe these trains aren’t so fast after all, try to go for a leak with the train rattling all over the place and realise that these trains are in fact quite fast indeed, spend ten minutes trying to figure out how to turn the faucet on to wash your hands, read a lot of Cloud Atlas, watch Roy take a McDonalds burger that he bought fucking TWO HOURS AGO out of his bag and eat it cold, arrive at Osaka-shin station, stare at maps for about half an hour, haul our luggage six blocks through the rain to our youth hostel, stare in bewilderment at rules which include an eleven pm curfew (again, this is a YOUTH hostel), dump our shit and rush out to get dinner before the place goes into fucking lockdown at the stroke of eleven, find a cosy little restaurant at a crossroads, order one of those meals that cooks itself on your table, have Steve order fucking INTESTINES for all of us, eat around the intestines to have the tofu and vegetables, settle the bill and discover that it was actually a Korean restaurant all along, go to a 7-Eleven and have the ATM reject my card again, wander the rainswept streets of Osaka searching for a post office ATM, give up and leg it back to the hostel to roll Indiana Jones-style under the medieval descending gate just before curfew, return to the room to find Roy and Rob smoking cigarettes “because it’s so cheap here.”
Pretty standard really!
Grub Street
3 comments
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February 14, 2009 at 12:33 am
sunrise089
Scarecrow,
One thing I would not have done on a vacation, but have a lot of respect for, is that you took a two week trip to a country with a lot to see, and didn’t try to see it all (unless you’re staying a lot longer…I get the impression you’re leaving soon). Most of my tourist experiences have involved doing more overtly touristy things, and not being so immersed in the country. For example, I probably would have spent a twelve day trip with 3-4 days stays in several different cities, and done (at least in a European country) more typical museums and famous places.
Anyways, my question would be how you would rate your trip to a relatively less-urban area, spending your time snowboarding rather than sightseeing. Do you feel you missed out on some sites, or did you actually get a better sense of the country? As expensive as Japan is, would it have made more sense to snowboard in the cheaper place? Or did the combination of a fun activity in an exotic locale make the money well worthwhile?
February 14, 2009 at 7:01 am
Smileyfax
Ah intestines, the meal of kings.
February 14, 2009 at 7:36 pm
grubstreethack
Niseko is by no means an exotic locale, at least culturally – it’s jam-packed with Australians, everyone speaks English, I could buy Vegemite at the local convenience store if i felt like shelling out eight dollars for it. The main reason we went snowboarding there is because it has the best powder snow anywhere in the world – usually a foot every night, from November to April. I’ve been to the Snowy Mountains in Australia, and by contrast it was typically shallow and icy.
This second half of the trip is the sightseeing half – we’re in Osaka right now, and went to the aquarium, shopping district and Umeda Building today. Would have gone to the castl;e as well but we lost a group member while shopping and spent an hour looking for her (living without mobile phones is difficult). And now I’m off to email my bank and ask why they have cancelled my mastercard, leaving me without access to cash in a foreign land!